


seaway tangles

by spookykingdomstarlight



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends: Knights of the Old Republic
Genre: Conflicted Revan, Established Relationship, F/M, Mental Coercion, Morally Ambiguous Character, POV Second Person, Post-Knights of the Old Republic, Stream of Consciousness, The Dark Side of the Force, ToT: Chocolate Box, Trick or Treat 2016, Unconventional Format, Vague Reference To Knights Of The Old Republic II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-31
Updated: 2016-10-31
Packaged: 2018-08-20 04:47:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 991
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8236606
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spookykingdomstarlight/pseuds/spookykingdomstarlight
Summary: Nothing            holds you to this place but            love.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Filigranka](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Filigranka/gifts).



“I love you,” Carth says, every day—twice, three times a day sometimes, when he’s trying to convince himself, you think—the days when it’s too hard for him to forget who he’s with, too much. Or too little in some cases, like when you show too little compassion toward others, your fingers twitching for your lightsaber, your mouth grasping for a harsh word, your mouth a sneer barely contained. You aren’t surprised that Carth would do this, persistent as he is, but the Force is equally persistent, tells you in a constant rush to _do it you’re more than this you once held the galaxy in your thrall._

_You could have that again. Be who you are. Be who you once were._

_Be._

(You’re not actually sure if it’s the Force suggesting these things to you or not. It certainly feels like the Force, but you’ve been deceived before, so you think maybe it’s just you. _You hope it’s just you._ The you from before trying to claw her way back. Or the you who is angry now that you could be deceived at all. ~~The Jedi~~ Your _peers_ imprinted you with a skeptical personality and in this one thing it has failed you. Anyone would be angry. Anyone would want that power back. But what you—the old you—wants doesn’t matter, because you can clearly be defeated and you are therefore  safe. The Force is a much greater foe. You’re not sure you’re strong enough to stop it.)

(The upside: there is genuinely nothing now that could surprise you.)

(The downside: you might have acquired an inconvenient taste for powerstrengthinfluence.)

(The Jedi did not ‘cure’ you wholly.)

(You tell no one that you take comfort in that.)

(Not even Carth.)

Carth’s fingers never press bruises into your skin. His lips never bite hard enough to bleed. And when he talks, you listen, you _trust_. Because you have to do something to drown out the hum of background noise and he’s very good at talking once you get him going. (It doesn’t take much, not at all, just a few words and he’s off. Sometimes he even winds himself up. Sometimes he even winds himself up before you know you need it. When he does, you wonder if he isn’t a little bit Force sensitive, too, though you hope he’s just so intuitive that he knows when you need him to rail at something to stop you from railing first.) Those times, you feel like you’re standing on a beach, barefoot, the waves lapping at your toes, the sand dissolving beneath your feet. But there’s nowhere else to go and if you make one wrong move

  
  
  


you’ll be pulled out to sea by a net of cold, grasping fingers, the ocean returning you to the depths to which you’ve already sunk. It is your home. Your place of true belonging. You want to go back, but you don’t. _You don’t_. And that’s what matters.

  
  
  
 

They make Carth an admiral.

> _In your dreams you’re the one who makes him an admiral—your admiral—decked out in gold and black, rage flickering behind his eyes as he does your bidding because he cannot help but do your bidding. The Force makes a willing ally of him, though sometimes he is willing all on his own you like to think. That gold and black, that rage, looks good on him, gives him a vitality you’ve never seen in real life. He isn’t a subdued man, no, but his anger is distant, fleeting, not this sustained thing, palpable in every action he takes on your behalf. It’s compelling in a way real life isn’t. You do not—_ do not _—let yourself dwell on that fact._
> 
> _Please don’t let yourself dwell._

                                                  He is proud and sad after the ceremony, handsome and distinguished and sour alike. He thinks they’re slighting you, that you’re a war hero, that you deserve as many honors as he, if not more of them for what you’ve accomplished, for what you’ve suffered and survived and defeated. But Jedi hold no titles other than Padawan and Knight and Master and not even those fit you, not now, and you don’t want them anyway. And the Republic, if they knew, would sooner throw you into prison than give you a medal and a fancy job description. It’s better that he should be the face of the Republic’s victory against the Sith.

Luckily, you want nothing more nor less than what you have. _What you have_ is more than you expected to claim as yours once you found out the truth.

He doesn’t understand and you love him for that.

(He doesn’t understand. And you hate him for that.)

The problem, you think, is that because you can’t remember before, you have no idea what your fatal flaw is. You don’t even know if it’s changed or if you’re destined to make the same mistake again. You have no idea how like your new self is to your old. You cannot plan a way to avoid falling and yet you cannot risk the possibility. Not now. Not knowing how it will end. _War upon war upon war, destruction even your old self couldn’t have guessed at, maybe wouldn’t have wanted had she known._                     (You believe this because you have to, but you know it might not be the truth.)

The truth is you cannot stay. You feel the call of something deeper, that droning whisper that will drag you back if you aren’t strong enough. If you can’t defeat it. ~~You can’t defeat it.~~ ~~No, you _can_ defeat it. Just not here. Not here.~~

You don’t tell Carth. Or rather, you don’t tell Carth enough. He cannot stop you, but he lets you go without much fight anyway. He’s fought enough for you to last you lifetimes.

But that is not enough to keep you.

It might not be enough

                                       to save

                                                      you.


End file.
